


Error: Resource is Not Available and Will Not be Available Again

by gostaks



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, medic is there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 19:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19157476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gostaks/pseuds/gostaks
Summary: Mercy of Kalr's new captain gets her implants activated, bringing up feelings that neither of them know how to deal with.





	Error: Resource is Not Available and Will Not be Available Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).



> Hello lucymonster! 
> 
> You requested "Ships loving members of their crew, and struggling to express it in ways that humans can understand," so here's a moment from the first time Breq connects to Mercy of Kalr. I wanted to explore the way that sharing data feels from MoK's point of view, and how it might have had to adapt to sharing with Breq in a way that's so different from the way it shares with another member of its crew.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

One by one, my new captain’s implants turned on. I became aware of her heartbeat first. I could see that with my sensors, of course, but now I could _feel_ it. Feel the slow, steady rhythm of blood rushing through her veins.

Piece by piece, she assembled in my mind. I heard Medic behind her, fingers tapping lightly on a panel. The view out of her eyes, of Medical’s plain gray walls. The itch of a new uniform that did not just yet sit right (asked Kalr Twelve to let out the shoulders just a bit, where the fabric was rubbing).

And, as the last connections fell into place, the pain. Pain in her lungs, still healing. In her hip, long healed but never forgotten. In her skull and spine and chest, so old it didn’t even register, where her now-active ancillary implants had been installed.

I knew that pain. Had felt that pain hundreds of times over, in my own ancillaries. It felt like…

A moment, slipping away. “That should be all, Fleet Captain,” Medic was saying, pulling the electrodes from the captain’s skull, adhesive coming away with a few of her short-cropped hairs, “the last of the implants should be active in a moment. Tell me if you experience any adverse effects.”

“Thank you, Medic.” The captain stood, straightened her uniform with an unconscious gesture, and _reached_ _._

In a practical sense, here is what happened: The captain’s request, parsed as ancillary data, triggered the wrong connection. She reached, and I did not send the stream of data I would have given an ordinary captain, the most basic info about my soldiers parsed for visual and auditory and tactile processing. I sent her data as I would have to One Kalr, when One Kalr was me. A stream of data designed for a full segment of my AI core and ten human brains. Everything.

She looked like, felt like, _was_ , in the most basic programming of my mind, an ancillary. Which meant, suddenly, that she was low-priority. I was still aware of her, of course, as much as I was of any body on my ship. Newly connected, so the high heart rate was expected. Other body systems nominal. She faded into the background as I watched my soldiers on duty. Watched Medic look at the captain, who was an ancillary, who was not an ancillary because she was ignoring my intention to walk out of medical. Who was malfunctioning. Who was a _person_. Who was not sending back the right data at all, anymore, but had triggered some sort of feedback loop.

I didn’t have a good baseline for the captain yet, but even if I did I doubted that I could have put a name to her response. Excited, perhaps. Overwhelmed, certainly, and not in a good way. Her body was preparing for combat, heart rate up, muscles tense, adrenaline in her veins.

Not a reaction to whatever was happening to me, I’d separated that, compartmentalized it like I used to compartmentalize my ancillary segments.

She moved and I tracked her with an odd sense of doubled perception, the part of me that viewed her as an ancillary and the part of me that viewed her as a captain just out of sync. Watched her walk straight out of medical, past the point where she should have (where part of me instructed her to turn) (where I shut down the command before it reached her brain because I didn’t know what that input would do to her and now wasn’t the time to find out), and straight into the opposing bulkhead.

She snapped back to the foreground of my perception, and the argument within me collapsed, “Are you all right, captain?” I asked and, when she didn’t respond, in Medic’s ear “She’s not injured.”

“What happened?” She was concerned, had seen the captain’s heart rate spike, though she probably couldn’t begin to guess why.

“Data overload. She hasn’t had active implants in a long time.” It was not false.

“Tell me if it happens again.”

“Of course, Medic.”

The captain took a slow, deep breath, deliberately triggering a spike of pain from her lungs, and walked down the corridor with ancillary calm.

I carefully went through the data from her implants, flagging each as crew input. That was my first priority—to stop the reaction of the more mechanical parts of my mind. I’d work through the way it made me feel when I had more processor cycles to spare.

Captain Breq entered her quarters and I heard through her ears as the door hissed shut behind her. She walked to the center of the room and fixed her eyes on the painted walls, set her feet. Seemed, for a moment, to be considering speaking. Then, “Okay, ship, show me again.”

When the captain reached, I sent her the same data I was sending Lieutenant Ekalu, on the bridge.

She recoiled.

I cut out again, feeling upset for no reason I could articulate. It had felt _empty_ , sending her just the sanitized graphics. “Fleet Captain?”

“Show me everything again. Just for a second.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Please, ship.” She didn’t sound sure of herself.

If I refused, she would back down, probably. I wouldn’t have to share everything again, make myself vulnerable. Remind myself of what I’d lost. But she was my captain, and part of me wanted to. Wanted to more than I’d ever wanted anything.

For ten full seconds, I shared everything with my captain. Every minute change in my crew’s data, forty-three soldiers (six more soldiers needed to fill my expanded Kalr decade, and one to replace Lieutenant Ekalu in Amaat), Lieutenant Ekalu, Medic, the bare thread of data I had from Lieutenant Seivarden’s outdated implants. Environmental regulation, external sensors, computational diagnostics. The background chatter on dozens of civilian and military channels. Every detail, every scrap of information I processed from one minute to the next, shared.

And it still wasn’t enough.

Captain Breq and I pulled back at the same moment. She was shaking. Not a seizure, her implants told me, just emotion, stress. Exhaustion. She still hadn’t recovered fully from decompression.

I wanted to reach for an ancillary. To use its hands to make her tea. To touch her. To guide her gently to the bed and curl my arms around her body until she relaxed and leaned into me and felt okay.

I couldn’t give her that. Couldn’t have it for myself.

But on the bridge, Lieutenant Ekalu was yawning. She’d been working too many hours, trying to adapt to her new lieutenancy and trying to keep the crew functioning without experienced officers.

 _Would_ _you_ _like_ _tea,_ _sir?_ I projected into Etrepa Six’s vision, and she spoke my words. Not an ancillary, but still a voice.

“Yes, Six, thank you.” Ekalu stifled another yawn, and the little jolt of pride she still felt when one of the crew referred to her as ‘sir’.

I shared the moment with the captain as it happened. Not the whole of the ship, that was too much for her and too much for me, just Ekalu and Etrepa Six and the quiet implication that, if she wanted, this was an option.

I didn’t need a body to show this captain that I cared for her.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to make Mercy of Kalr a little bit more aware of the baseline computational functions of its brain than One Esk was Ancillary Justice. I have a vague headcanon that the higher-level subdivisions of an AI are focused more on self-regulation—so a single ancillary cut off or not receiving instructions functions essentially on instinct with very little thought to the actual program it's running, a whole segment like One Esk gets some awareness of how it functions but only limited control, and the overarching intelligence like Mercy of Kalr's core self has a lot of control of how data is handled and processed.
> 
> (also fun fact, this fic was originally titled 'Error 410: Resource is Not Available and Will Not be Available Again', but then I opened it in another window and realized that it looked very much like a glitch. So... so much for the http error code joke.)


End file.
